Definition of hexahedron - What it is, Meaning and Concept

The concept of hexahedron comes from the Latin word hexaedron and refers to a solid consisting of six faces .The notion is used in the field of geometry.

In this context, a solid is a geometric body : that is, an object that has three dimensions (height, width and length). faces are the various surfaces that make up these solids; in the case of the hexahedron, the object is formed with six faces.

Being developed with flat surfaces, the hexahedron is also a polyhedron .With greater precision we can say that it is a convex polyhedron , since any segment that a two of its points will be contained inside the polyhedron itself.

Another characteristic of hexahedrons is that their faces have five sides or less.When all the faces of the solid they are congruent squares (their sides are equal), it is a regular hexahedron .

These regular hexahedrons are cubes : solids that consist of six equal squares.It should be noted that the cubes-and therefore the regular hexahedrons-are platonic solids , as all convex polyhedra whose faces are regular polygons that are equal to each other are called.This designation is linked to Platon , the philosopher of Ancient Greece I do the first studies about it.

It is possible to recognize several kinds of hexahedrons, with different amounts of vertices and edges.From a topological point of view, only seven of them are easy to distinguish, but there are more.Of course, In all cases they are solid six-sided, since that is the distinctive property of these polyhedra.Let's see a brief description of some of the most common:

* The pentagonal base pyramid has five sides with three sides and one with five (the latter is its base), six vertices and ten edges.This differs from the image that we usually have of the pyramid, when we think of the Egyptians, for example, since they have a base of four sides and four faces of three sides each;

* The rectangular prism , also known by the name of cuboid , has six four-sided faces, eight vertices and twelve edges each We are facing a form that we all know but that we do not usually call in this way or associate it with the concept of hexahedron, but simply associate it with the concept of "box", another term that is accepted to refer to it in a conversation informal or even in certain technical fields, such as three-dimensional graphic design;

* the cube is the most common of all hexahedrons, and it is a solid three-dimensional object that It consists of six identical faces, each with four vertices and four sides.Starting from the two-dimensional universe, six squares are necessary to form a cube;

* The double tetrahedron has six faces with three sides, five vertices and nine edges each.The tetrahedron is a polyhedron whose faces are triangles.At first glance, it looks like a pyramid to which one side is missing.If all their faces are equilateral triangles, all equal to each other, then it is a regular tetrahedron ;

* The parallelepiped is a polyhedron with the same number of faces and vertices as the cube or rectangular prism, although each of its faces is a parallelogram , that is a four-sided figure of which each pair of opposites are equal to each other but different from the others;

In addition to the types of hexahedra recently exposed there are several more, although they are not always related to a specific name, but can be recognized from their characteristics.